Making
generalizations about the visual
culture of any group of people is a crude endeavor, especially
with a culture as diverse as Poland's. With this thought in mind,
know that this survey, as any must be, is tremendously limited
in its breadth and depth.

Krzysztof Wodiczko (American, born Poland, 1943-), The Tijuana Projection, 2001, public projection at the Centro Cultural de Tijuana, Mexico (as part of In-Site 2000). Krzysztof Wodiczko creates large-scale slide and video projections of politically-charged images on architecturalfaçades and monuments worldwide. By appropriating public buildings and monuments as backdrops for projections, Wodiczko focusesattention on ways in which architecture and monuments reflect collective memory and history.

Marek Cecula (American, born Poland, 1944-),
Shard,
1998, authenticporcelainshard,
plaster, wood, glass, 14 x 14 x 2.5 inches, Grand Arts,
Kansas City, MO. Roberta Lord, of Grand Arts wrote, "In
1979, visiting his Polish homeland for the first time in 25 years,
Marek Cecula was strolling with his sister along a Baltic beach
when he spotted a small white object half-buried in the sand.
He picked it up and saw that it was a piece of a ceramic plate
bearing the factory's back stamp, or 'maker's mark.' The mark
in this case was a swastika. Cecula, a self-exiled Polish Jew
who has made ceramics his life's work, and whose father was interned
in Dachau, held in his hand the identifying fragment of a piece
of dinnerware manufactured for the Nazi party. For his 2000 exhibition
Violations, he formed a white plaster 'ghost plate' around
the stamped piece and mounted it in a plain birch box with a
glass face." See hallmark,
Polish art, and shadow
box.

Polish
National Museum in Warsaw. The
Polish National Museum (also called the Polish National Gallery)
has a collection of almost seven thousand paintings by Polish
artists. It displays about four hundred of them. These reflect
the stylistic transformations in Polish art between the 16th
century and today, with a concentration on the rapid development
of painting in the 19th century.